The Exceptional Penny Toys of Max Berry - Part II

Friday, October 24, 2014
Partly sunny and colder

The ExceptionalPenny Toys of Max Berry 

Part II

  There's an exceptional auction coming  in November from Bertoia Auctions who have been chosen to represent the fabulous collection of toys from the Max Berry Collection. Mr. Berry is a well-respected and internationally-renowned international grade lawyer. He also happensedto collect  exceptional and rarer toys  over his long and illustrious career.

   Yesterday toys were Part I of this sorry about Mr. Berry's penny toys. Today is another fine grouping.  I've asked you, my readers to study the 2 groupings of toys, and see which go the two are the more expensive ones, starting of course with the initial opening bidding price. Tomorrow, I'll post the answer in another post.

Please click here to visit this fine American toy auction company

I left soft of the background in this photo because there didn't seem to be enough depth to the photo. This is a non-articulated (doesn't have any moving parts) toy. It also happens to have a small door at the back (the sled) where candies could be placed inside the golden-coloured tin box.

This toy is animated, meaning that it moves. When the small lever at the back of the toy is pushed in, the decorated egg rises like a bucking horse, and a bunny (rabbit) appears from under the egg.

Punch and Judy were a famous fictional pair of fictional characters  a long time ago. 

They always squabbled (fought) and were always getting into trouble!

There's a mother animated toy with a candy box at the base.

What's interesting to note is how the manufacturer chose to have the bear muzzled ( the mouth closed with a leather strapping). Long ago,  bears would be captured and trained to perform in circuses and on the streets. Nowadays, this action has been banned in many countries and rarely is seen around the world.

I have a very good memory for remembering visual things,and this fine toy below I can remember having placed it in one of my posts. What I like about the penny toy is to try and see where tone small bendable points are in order to see how the toy was assembled. There is a small rod through the centre of the boat, so I would presume that the boar moved up and down as a young child rolled it along the floor.

What's also amazing is to realize how small these toys actually are.

This one is a mere 3 1/2"  (89 mm)- about the length of my middle finger long.

My height for relative comparison is 5' 9" (1.75 M). 

I wonder how many of these toys were broken when parents walked over them in the house?

Being a German manufacturer, I'm sure the Meier company made toys that illustrated all kinds of 

German figures from the German culture, as well as some fictional literary characters as well.

I'm always amazed to see animals totally out of content in their natural world.  The best example are animals of all kinds pulling carts. In the case of the toy below, a monkey is riding a large-sized dog.

The acrobat is quite articulated and rotates over the bar. However, what I find quite exceptional is the toning and colour gradation to the acrobat's face. You'll have to view these images in slide mode to see them best. I purposely made these images extra-large for that purpose.

 I've come across a few toys that required the use of string tied to I assume two posts stuck in the ground or 2 nails hammered into walls. (I don't think parents would have approved of the latter option). The best example that comes to mind are the toy Zeppelins, or the tin space ships (e.g. Buck Rogers) from the 1930's.

This toy would have been quite interesting for a very young child to see. Not only would the toy move along the length of the string, but the propellers would rotate.

Finally,  a very long toy (in miniature toy sizes) measuring 6 1/2"  ( 165 mm).

It's interesting to see how much detail was lithographed into all of the toys, considering how small they were. In the case of this toy, each of the four horses are different from one another.

And as an"added" value, this toy happened to be a storage for candies!

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey,

toyearcher@gmail.com